Government certifies 20 companies as incubators under Startup India

There is a paucity of incubators and to fill this gap, the government is trying to engage private organisations for providing mentorship facilities to entrepreneurs.Ruchika Chitravanshi | ET Bureau | July 14, 2016, 08:48 IST

NEW DELHI: The government has certified 20 private organisations, including Nasscom and iSprit, as incubators under the Startup India Action Plan. The move will help in growing the reach of incubators for upcoming startups. Currently, under the Startup India initiative, only government-run 278 incubators are allowed to certify and recommend startups.

“There is a lack of right kind of incubators. We need to provide sector-specific services, which we are trying to do in our warehouses,” said Rajat Tandon, vicepresident, Nasscom.

Incubators provide a set up where multiple startups are given space to operate and are mentored to scale up their business to a certain level. There is a paucity of incubators and to fill this gap, the government is trying to engage private organisations for providing mentorship facilities to entrepreneurs.

“We will make this list available to startups, so there is a wider base of incubators available for them to reach out to,” a senior government official said. Last month, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) received 571 applications from startups wanting to avail the tax benefits announced in the Startup India Action Plan.

Of these, only 106 had the required documents — one of them being the incubator’s certificate qualifying them as an innovative business meeting all the other requirements of the ‘startup’ definition. So far, only two startups have managed to get the approval of the inter-ministerial board for tax and intellectual property rights-related benefits.

DIPP has formed a monitoring committee headed by DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek to take stock of the action plan’s implementation once a month. The government plans to create sectorspecific incubators under the Atal Innovation Mission along with 500 tinkering labs to promote entrepreneurship, provide pre-incubation training and a seed fund for high growth startups as part of the Startup India Action Plan announced by PM Narendra Modi in January.

DIPP has also started mapping incubation centres across the country with a special focus on tier-II and III cities.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) pulled up Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea for warning subscribers of certain plans that their SIM cards would be deactivated if they do not recharge their pre-paid accounts though these subscribers had the minimum required balance.